One of the most controversial questions in psychology is always how and to what extent, without knowledge, can affect our behavior. At the beginning of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud introduced the idea that our behavior is governed by thoughts, feelings, and memories – a concept that gained great popularity but was eventually rejected as unscientific.

Modern neuroscience tells us that we are not fully aware of most brain activity, but that the process unknowingly affects behavior; However, some influences, such as unknowingly translating “Priming. ”Some have come to realize the extent of this. Unknowingly process is limited..

According to a recent brainstorming study, unintentionally processed visual information is distributed to a network of brain regions engaged in high-level cognitive activity. The results contribute to the debate by considering how unintelligible information affects the mind and behavior and by reviewing one of the main theories. Consciousness.

Process without knowing

Ning May And his colleagues in Basque Center in Knowledge, Brain and Language Recruit 7 participants in Spain and visualize their brains with a magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Half of the images were living creatures, and half of them were physical objects. They can all be divided into ten categories, such as animals or boats. Participants viewed a total of 1,728 images presented in 32 blocks over a one-hour inspection session over a six-day period.

After determining the brain activity pattern associated with each image, the researchers presented similar images for a short period of time in subsequent experiments. In some of the images, it is presented for 47 milliseconds (ms, thousand seconds), which gives the participants a clear understanding. In others, they are presented for 38 ms, which is just enough time to capture the images at a glance. And in others, presented for 25 ms, in this case they did not enter the participants’ consciousness.

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When the images were presented for a short period of time and the participants did not know their content, their brain functionality contained enough information for the researchers to classify the images with inanimate objects. In other words, it unknowingly contains meaningful information about images, making it accessible to higher levels of processing.

The authors share their findings, which are Published In the magazine Nature is human natureThey suggest that intellectual representations of consciousness and non-conscious information overlap in some regions of the visual cortex, as well as the need to revise the concept of universal workplace consciousness.

The concept of global workplace consciousness

International workplace theories Awareness Awareness is generated when the central and peripheral lobes of the brain structure “disseminate” information to other nervous systems, such as attention, language, and working memory, while “disseminating” information. Therefore, different types of information are processed within the relevant local domains, and they are entered into consciousness only if they are first received and then shared with the central center.